REVEALED: University of Nevada gunman Anthony Polito, 67, was armed with 9mm handgun and 11 loaded magazines: Shooter had a 'target list' - but none of the three people he killed were on it

A business professor who shot and killed three teachers at the University of Nevada had a legally-purchased 9mm handgun and 11 loaded magazines on him when he died. 

Anthony Polito, 67, died on Wednesday in a shootout with police after murdering two teachers, and a third unidentified person.

Polito had been rejected for a job at the campus, and sent letters filled with white powder to other colleges that turned him down, it has emerged.

Before the shooting, Polito mailed 22 letters to university faculty members across the U.S., but the contents of those letters wasn't immediately known, said Sheriff Kevin McMahill on Wednesday. Officials were able to intercept some of the letters sent, and the first opened had an 'unknown white powder substance,' said McMahill.

The sheriff said police have contacted everyone on the suspect's target list, except for one person who was on a flight.

'None of the individuals on the target list became a victim,' McMahill said.

Investigators searched an apartment in nearby Henderson, Nevada, late Wednesday as part of the investigation and retrieved several electronic devices, including Polito's cellphone, one of the officials said. They also found a 'last will and testament' type document.

The sheriff said Polito applied for 'several' jobs at various colleges and universities in Nevada and was denied the job each time.

He was a professor in North Carolina from 2001-2017, working at East Carolina University's Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management. 

He resigned in January 2017 as a tenured associate professor. 

One of his former students said that Polito spoke frequently of his regular visits to Las Vegas, and loved the casinos.

Paul Whittington, now 33, told AP that Polito went on tangents during class about his many trips to Las Vegas.

Polito told his students he visited twice yearly, staying in different hotels and going to various clubs, Whittington said.

'He was really, really, really fixated on the city of Las Vegas,' Whittington said. 'I think he just really liked going there.'

Whittington also said he was thin-skinned and vindictive.

Polito told Whittington's class that he remembered the faces of students who gave him bad reviews in the annual end-of-year anonymous survey, and would say he was sure who they were and where they sat, pointing at seats in the classroom.

'He always talked about the negative feedback he got,' said Whittington, who took Polito's intro to operations management class in 2014.

'He didn't get a lot of it, but there would always be one student every semester, or at least one student every class, that would give a negative review. And he fixated on those.'

On Thursday, the first victims were named as Patricia Navarro-Velez, 39, a member of the university's accounting department, and longtime professor Cha Jan 'Jerry' Chang, 64. 

Chang's death was from a gunshot wound to the head, the coroner ruled, and Navarro-Velez died from multiple gunshot wounds, according to 8NewsNow. 

A third victim was also a faculty member and has reportedly been identified. They will not be named until their next of kin is informed. 

The shooting took place on the fourth floor of the business school.

After opening fire, the gunman went to several other floors of the business school before he was killed in a shootout with two university police detectives outside the building, which is next to the university's student union, UNLV Police Chief Adam Garcia said. 

In a statement, UNLV President Keith Whitfield said the mass shooting was 'the most difficult day in the history of our university', and said his 'heart breaks for the families, friends and loved ones of Dr Navarro and Dr Chang.' 

Navarro-Velez and Chang were killed in a 40-minute rampage carried out by professor Tony Polito, 67, who did not work at UNLV, but reportedly had applied for a job there and was rejected. 

Navarro-Velez was a mother-of-four, her former professor at the University of Puerto Rico, David Correa, told the Las Vegas Review Journal. 

She was first identified in an Instagram post shared by the California All-Stars Las Vegas Cheer Gym, which said: 'Our hearts are shattered as we share the devastating news of the loss of a beloved member of our Cali family in yesterday's senseless shooting.

'Our deepest condolences and prayers go out to the Navarro-Velez family during this unimaginably difficult time,' the post said. 

According to her university profile, Navarro-Velez achieved a Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Central Florida, and focused her research on 'cybersecurity disclosures and assurance, internal control weakness disclosure, and data analytics.' 

Chang was a business professor who had worked at UNLV for over 20 years, and was a longtime respected educator focusing on management information systems. 

A former student praised the professor on an education rating site after news of his death, saying they were 'fortunate' to be taught by him and 'wish he wasn't taken away from us so soon.'

'We respect all the hard work and dedication you've put into UNLV and the MIS department, we thank you for all that you have done for us,' they added. 

A fourth person was also shot in the spree but is in stable condition, Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a Wednesday night press conference. 

When the massacre unfolded, a huge police presence including tactical teams were seen scrambling to the college after an alert was issued to students, warning them to 'RUN-HIDE-FIGHT.' 

Less than an hour after the alert was released, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department announced the suspect was deceased, and footage showed terrified students being gradually escorted out of buildings across the campus. 

As of Thursday afternoon, UNLV shuttered all buildings and services, with the exception of the Student Recreation and Wellness Center and dining room, and officials say the investigation into the shooting is ongoing. 

In a statement after Navarro-Velez and Chang were named as the first victims, UNLV President Keith Whitfield said the shooting was 'the most difficult day in the history of our university.' 

'Words are still hard to come by as we're only beginning to process the grief, loss, anger, and fear associated with Wednesday's tragic campus shooting that took the lives of three of our cherished faculty members. Another faculty member remains hospitalized,' the statement continued. 

'We've now learned that two of the victims who passed away – Patricia Navarro-Velez and Cha Jan 'Jerry' Chang – were members of our Lee Business School faculty. The third victim, also a UNLV faculty member, will be identified following notification of next of kin.

'Dr. Navarro-Velez, an assistant professor of accounting, had devoted her career to educating the next generation of accountants. She joined UNLV nearly five years ago as a professor of accounting, where she primarily focused on teaching accounting information systems.

'Dr. Chang was a longtime educator of management information systems, spending more than 20 years of his academic career teaching a generation of UNLV Lee Business School students.

'My heart breaks for the families, friends, and loved ones of Dr. Navarro and Dr. Chang, and for all of the victims of this senseless act of violence that has physically and emotionally affected so many.' 

The UNLV campus was placed on urgent lockdown as cops hunted for the gunman, while the Harry Reid International Airport - roughly two miles from the shooting - briefly grounded flights in a security precaution. 

Student John Harris heard what he later realized was a gunshot as he was getting out of his car in the parking garage of an on-campus apartment complex. In the elevator, Harris said he got an emergency text alert text from the university.

'I wasn't sure what to believe,' said Harris, 21, who ended up sheltering at a friend's dorm.

He told AP: 'But as I came down to the street, and I saw there were a bunch of cops in the parking lot at the student union, I knew what I heard was a gunshot and this wasn't a drill.'

A witness to Wednesday's attack told Fox News they heard several shots ring out through the campus, before they were evacuated by police.

'(I heard) boom, boom, boom, more shots,' she said. 'So I ran into the basement and I heard shots outside, heard police, and then the police just evacuated me out.

'I had my hands over my head and yeah, I was hearing a lot of shots. I did not know how many shooters there were. I did not really know anything.'

An English professor at UNLV, Vincent Perez, told MSNBC that he heard seven or eight loud gunshots 'one after another', when he looked out across the campus from the balcony of a building.

'We realized this is a real shooting, and there's an active shooter on campus,' he said.

'It just sounded like a high-powered weapon — just echoing, echoing in a way that ... makes you realize this is somebody out to kill people.'